Many medical patients, elderly people, and the like require a variety of apparatus for their comfort and physical movement, e.g., apparatus such-as wheelchairs, walkers and bed tray structures. There is ever present the challenge of providing a suitable tray for carrying or at least containing, and supporting a variety of items such as papers, magazines, and even eating utensils at mealtime. Tray apparatus needs to be adapted for external support, not requiring use of the patient's hands. Trays for walkers have been devised heretofore and have been engineered for mounting to walkers so that the patient will not require the use of his hands to support the tray, but rather can use his hands to support part of his body weight on the walker.
When ambulatory, patients often experience difficulties in keeping the tray level. The invention herein provides an articulate and articulative suspension of the tray so that the tray is maintained in an essentially horizontal position, even though a walker, for exmaple, may be tipped or subject to jarring during transit. A similar type of suspension is provided the tray, wherein the same is releasably mounted to a wheelchair or, for example, even to a bed tray support structure. One important concept, therefore, in the invention, is to have a tray that is gravity-assisted to maintain a substantially horizontal planar disposition even though its support structure may be tipped or even jarred. By this feature, the contents of the tray remain undisturbed and food items less subject to spilling, and so forth.
Certain types of trays, in the past, have had upstanding arms that are pivoted to the tray; this is deemed unwise since a maldistribution of articles on the tray results in spilling, where the center of gravity of such articles is not in the same plane as the pivot points of the arms.
Additionally, the present invention uses an articulative suspension structure including a link, whereby movements are dampened, thereby reducing tendencies of slight swinging movements that might otherwise occur. Certain U.S. Pat. Nos. are known which, in general, are related to the broad concept of walkers and carries therefore, as follows:
2,745,465, 4,184,618,
3,957,071, 4,676,416,
4,074,683, 4,708,274,
It can be seen that the general concept of a tray suspended from a walker, standing alone, is not new in the art. However, prior walkers and tray structures are believed unsuited to the gravity-assist function of the articulative suspension structure in the present invention; likewise, several additional features are found in the present invention, not shown in the prior art as known, including the concept of removable perforate trays or plates, releasable locking means for fixing tray disposition when structure is at rest, sponge-like resilient boots or safety pads disposed at the bottoms of walker legs, and other features as will hereinafter be set forth. So far as the suspension feature itself is concerned, the prior art does not appear to incorporate an intermediate link structure and flexible connection to the cross-bar of a walker or other structure whereby any movements which do occur can be dampened. In this invention, under most operating conditions there will be a free and uniform adjusment of a tray to its intended horizontal position, even though the walker, wheelchair, or other structure may be temporarily tipped.